Posted
by
Soulskill
on Friday August 17, 2012 @10:10AM
from the fire-that-bad-boy-up dept.

TrueSatan writes with this quote from Discovery News:
"A human skull dated to about 2,684 years ago with an 'exceptionally preserved' human brain still inside of it was recently discovered in a waterlogged U.K. pit, according to a new Journal of Archaeological Science study. The brain is the oldest known intact human brain from Europe and Asia, according to the authors, who also believe it's one of the best-preserved ancient brains in the world (PDF). 'The early Iron Age skull belonged to a man, probably in his thirties,' according to lead author Sonia O'Connor. 'Cause of death is rarely possible to determine in archaeological remains, but in this case, damage to the neck vertebrae is consistent with a hanging.'"

Something that occasionally bothers me is the question of how much a brain works after it is dead. We don't really understand consciousness so we don't know how much of the brain is responsible for it. In fact the only way we know (suspect?) our fellow humans are conscious is they tell us - ok I'm wondering in to Turing test territory which isn't where I want to go.

Suppose we were to hit this old intact brain with a jolt of electricity - would it feel it? Would it be conscious at some level for a brief moment but completely unable to inform us? Would it suffer a brief horrible dream? It makes me feel like I want to have my brain completely obliterated somehow when I die so I can be sure there is nothing left that is capable of suffering.

The brain being intact at a gross level doesn't mean that it's intact at a cellular level...so I doubt the network topology of the brain is still in place. Besides, the brain has state which decays without active maintenance, so network topology alone is not sufficient.

You clearly have never seen Return of the Living Dead. Just destroying the brain is not enough. You must ether be cremated or at least have an ample supply of brains to eat, otherwise you will be driven mad by the pain of your own flesh rotting.

None. After the brain is deprived of oxygen for a few minutes the cells die. Neurons have the highest cellular metabolic rate, among those the retina has the very very highest (you'll go blind before you go brain dead from general oxygen deprivation to the brain, or from sugar deprivation such as low sugar for a diabetic). The synapses of your brain won't fire without energy, so deprive them of that energy (sugar and oxygen) and they stop firing, thus you stop thinking. Low levels will cause your though

>>>Suppose we were to hit this old intact brain with a jolt of electricity - would it feel it? Would it be conscious at some level for a brief moment but completely unable to inform us?

The neurons disconnect from one another when they die. When you hold a dead brain, you are holding a blank slate. Which is why freezing people after they die is pointless. Even if you could revive the body, the brain has nothing in it. (No memory; the person would be a vegetable.)

In general, when someone is declared dead, their individual cells are still alive. The problem is tthat they will self destruct as soon as sufficient oxygen is made available (reperfusion).

I suppose the idea is to freeze the person during that window and hope that in the future we figure out how to solve the reperfusion problem, thaw tissue without causing cellular damage, and won't mind having a bunch of extra people nobody knows with no relevant skills hanging around. That last bvit seems to be a bit of a

It makes me feel like I want to have my brain completely obliterated somehow when I die so I can be sure there is nothing left that is capable of suffering

Rest easy friend, the meatspace is all there is. And even when you're alive and functioning, there's no suffering with structural damage to the brain. You're diminished, sure, and can be a vegestable afterwards. But pain is a tool of the system. It isn't applied when mucking about wit

>>>>>Maybe after they transplant the brain in a brainless body, we'll find out why he was hanged in his time.>>>>Convicted of a crime he didn't commit, of course...

Good luck trying to understand his ancient Celtic language when he speaks. I can just imagine a bunch of language professors mumbling, "I don't know what he's saying. He's not pronouncing the words properly. It sounds like Hillbilly Celtic."

Could you explain to me how a single light comment on the historical fact that European history is replete with massive amounts of Jewish persecution, constitutes an "agenda"? The only way this is possible, given the plain historical facts, is if it is you you, in fact, who have an agenda.

If the actual true history of Europe makes you so uncomfortable that you attack anyone who even so much as mentions it in a light off-the-cuff comment in an online discussion, then sorry, that is something you have to deal with and come to terms with.

Take your pick:A: He chiseled state secrets on a cave wall.B: He had consensual group sex with one of his students.C: Headbutted his wife, star of a campfire reality show.D: Was really Cowboy Neal using his new time machine.

wouldn't "out of oil" or "out of lubrication" be more correct? you cannot add oxygen to a defunct brain in order to repair it, just as adding fuel to an engine that has seized wont (likely) make it run.

I'll use an analogy to explain how this is possible. Imagine a game that is set in medieval times in which you are exploring castles 500 years old. The game is new, but the castles in it were old right from the start.

God played the same trick with us. The universe is 6000 years old, but when it was created (when he inserted the CD, if it makes you feel more comfy) it already had extinct species, people that had been dead for a few centuries and so on.
Clear now?

I'm not sure what is more sad. That some people might believe that or that some people who think they are smart believe that those people believe that. When someone posts that to #ImAFuckingDumbass or with a retarded cookie monster profile it's clearly a form of sarcasm, but since that doesn't communicate well some other dumb asses think they are being serious.

Thing is, there is very little you could test unless you get this 3,000 year old brain to boot up. Think of it this way - you are handed 2 non-working CPUs, could you tell if they are different? Perhaps if they have physically different (but human brains naturally deviate from the norm), but unless you have an ability to reverse-engineer these CPUs (and we don't have that ability for human brains) both would be just chunks of silicon.

Not civilization in northern and western Europe. That region was a barbaric, uncivilized backwater until the 16th century. When the Chinese built the Forbidden City they invited dignitaries from the entire known world, as far away as Timbuktu, to witness the opening ceremonies. Not only were they not invited, news of the event didn't even reach France and Germany for almost a century. It wasn't until the discovery of the Americas and the looting of the Aztec and Inca gold and silver that the region actu

Are you that ignorant or just trolling? The Mayans and Egyptians had civilizations going back to 6,000 BC. The Thais and Chinese have written histories going back 5000 years. Between the Mayans and Egyptians, that's over 8000 years of civilizations (600 years BC+2000 years AD).

a 3000 year old brain may have some differences. The last 3000 years a lot of crazy things have happened to civilizations, that caused a fare amount of changes in breeding policies, and cultural effects, diets.Roman Empire, Christianity, End Of Roman Empire, Dark Ages, Renascence, Spanish expansion, English Expansion, American Expansion....

We assume that ancient man was the same as us, if he was just born 3k years later he would just fit in fine... But that may not be the case. Perhaps with cross breading

The degree of Neandethalism would probably not be one of the characteristics shown by the brain. This person dates back to 1000BC. Neanderthals died out around 30,000BC. That type of information would more probably come from DNA analysis than organ morphology.

If he was probably hanged, then he may have been unfit for society (although that's not conclusive, as whoever did the hanging could easily have been the one unfit for society) so from this we can figure out the guy's name was probably Abby Someone, and his brain can be used for experiments.

Actually there are quite a number (hundreds) of preserved corpses of people that were hanged from this period which have been recovered from bogs in northern Europe. The tannins in bog water preserve the skin quite well, in several cases police were called first because the discoverers thought it was a recent murder. Some of them still have the rope around their neck. This site was probably anoxic as well if the soft tissues were also preserved. A quick search on "bog bodies" will bring up a plethora of information.

Saying that it happened about 2684 years ago implies (at least to me) that they can date it between precisely 2683 and 2685 years. Does it not strike anyone else as odd that they could pinpoint something that long ago so precisely?

Saying that it happened about 2684 years ago implies (at least to me) that they can date it between precisely 2683 and 2685 years. Does it not strike anyone else as odd that they could pinpoint something that long ago so precisely?

In the linked PDF article, see the end of the second column of the third page, right above Figure 2. They're reporting a mean and a confidence interval. These kinds of numbers seem absurdly specific, but really, it's the right way to report the results--I can pretty much guarantee you that if the authors had written "about 2600 years old," the editor at Journal of Archaological Science would have demanded a clarification, and rightly so.

There's a theory that ancient literature from about 3000 years ago points to humans having a different way of perceiving the world than they do today (Bicameral Mind). This is described in the following Wikipedia article ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_%28psychology%29 [wikipedia.org] ).

>"For example, in the Iliad and sections of the Old Testament no mention is made of any kind of cognitive processes such as introspection, and there is no apparent indication that the writers were self-aware."

And that's what makes the more recent data about protein conformational changes so interesting - it gives the impression that there could be something vaguely equivalent to a hard disk, that it's not all electrical signals needing to be maintained, but something a little more enduring.